I agreed to develop software and do data science work for a professor for free thinking it would be a quick simple project and they told me if it turned out well they would send it to his connections at the company that makes the device's that this software would work with.
For context I was no longer a student at this university and I made that clear during the first meeting.
This project ended up being a year long process of back and forth and him asking for more and tweaks and features.
During the last meeting I had with him he was complaining how his wife is being underpaid for her work, while he also asked me to add more features for free.
He also told me it's super easy to get a software/data science job these days so I shouldn't have any trouble with that. During our last meeting he would point to random objects in his office and be like “this stapler is made by x company and they need computers, and this printer was made by this company and they need software developers, you should apply to one of these places it's super easy to get a job these days.”
I finally finished the project and he emailed me told me he no longer works at the university so he doesn't need it anymore.
He asked me to send the software to the person replacing him because the code automates a task they had to do for their research that took 5-6 hours and does it in seconds.
The other day my roommate who still goes to that university, found campus police searching his office.